The Biden Conspiracy

As a conspiracy theory skeptic it is rather remarkable to me that the White House was able to hide the state of Biden's health for so long. It took the participation of many more people than I would have thought could have kept the secret, and it stayed secret despite the existence of dozens of reporters whose job it is to cover the President.

How should the relative success of this conspiracy change the way we think about conspiracies in general? The biggest takeaway for me is that most people want to be fooled. When the interview with the lawyer investigating the classified documents case characterized Biden as an old man with memory issues, many people seemed to attack the messenger instead of trying to find out the truth. In hindsight that was a huge indication something wasn't right but I can't think of any serious public movement in his party or in the press to investigate what was going on with his health. Behind the scenes, the scheduling of the debate so early in the year before the conventions seems to have been an attempt by Biden's campaign team to blow the whistle without appearing to do so. If this wasn't an election year, how long could they have kept it up?

The other big surprise to me is how little the reveal of the state of Biden's health has affected the press. There don't seem to have been any recriminations for missing a huge story for at least the 9 months between the justice lawyers interview with Biden and debate. Not only did they miss the story, when the WSJ ran a story about it one month before the debate it was met with dismissal as a partisan attack. Footage of Biden at the NATO summit was also dismissed as fake. Perhaps once the election is over there will be a reckoning.

In the end the success of the Biden conspiracy for as long as it lasted does not much change my skepticism of conspiracies in general. It didn't last that long, it seemed to be sabotaged from the inside, and there were still rumblings of what the truth was. It does make me more skeptical of the white house press corp in particular and the media in general.